Kitchen Chronicles is a weekly series by Barbara Sibbald — novelist, award-winning journalist, and long-time contributor to Ottawa Magazine. Visit Kitchen Chronicles every Sunday for a new instalment — and a tested recipe.

Post Bet

— How are your feet? asks Fiona without turning around from the counter, where she’s preparing the sauce for butter chicken.*

He’s such an idiot, she thinks. What if the neighbours saw him running around starkers in the snow? How impressive.

— I’m fine, Luc snarls.

— That was quite the stunt last night, she continues. You could have slipped, you know, she says. You could have done yourself some damage.

— Well, I didn’t, so stop fretting, he replies. Where’s the aspirin?

— Hung? she asks.

— J’ai mal aux cheveux**.

— Serves you right. They’re in the cupboard above the phone.

She turns to him.

— I’ll never understand all the competitiveness between you and Georges. Where’s the enjoyment in that?

— It’s just the way we are. It works for us.

— It seems so superficial. Martin Amis says friendship has this mysterious power. “You show your friend your weakness, and somehow you are both stronger.”

— It isn’t all superficial, Fiona. Sure we have our share of pissing contests, but he confides in me too. About Giselle.

D’oh. He curses himself for bringing that up.

— He did break that off, didn’t’ he? asks Fiona.

— Luc shrugs and downs his two aspirins with a slug of tepid tap water.

— It’s like I said: he told me he would and that’s the last I heard of it. It’s really not my business.

— But we had a deal, Luc. Either he breaks it off or I tell Anne, before she asks me.

— I don’t want to bug him right now. You know he’s having problems at work, that lawsuit.Il passe un mauvais quart d’heure***. Besides, I think he has broken it off with Giselle, although he was pretty smitten.

— With her, or with the sex? She’s younger right?

— It’s one of the pitfalls of marriage, says Luc. It’s inevitable that the edge wears off and you fall into a routine in bed.

— Even if you’re not married? she asks.

— Same diff, says Luc. Long-term relationships, it doesn’t matter about the social construct. After a while the passion ebbs.

— Is that the way you feel about us? she asks.

— Be realistic, Fee, you know it’s the truth.

— We’re good, she says, softening.

— Yeah, we are, in general. But it’s not like it used to be, he says.

— Well, maybe if you’d let me take some initiative once in a while, it might spice things up a bit.